Effects of Spa Therapy on Pulmonary Emphysema in Relation to IgE-mediated Allergy

INTRODUCTION In recent years, the number of elderly patients with pulmonary emphysema has been increasing. However, there are few effective medications for pulmonary emphysema. Our previous studies have demonstrated that spa therapy is effective for bronchial asthma; subjective symptoms1), ventilatory function2,3), bronchial hyperresponsiveness4,5) are improved by spa therapy. Suppressed function of adrenocortical glands is also recovered by spa therapy6,7). Regarding the effects of spa therapy on pulmonary emphysema, our results have suggetsed that spa therapy is beneficial for the treatment of emphysema：the values of ventilatory parameters such as FVC (%predicted), FEV 1.0, PEFR and RV are significantly improved after spa therapy for more than 2 months8). However, the results have suggested that the effects of spa therapy are observed only in patients with emphysema at early stage (LAA